This book is a revised version of my PhD thesis, submitted to the Department of History of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2003 (in Greek). In writing this book I have tried to take into consideration books and articles which were published in the meantime, mostly until late 2007; other than that, I have made several changes to the content, but few changes to the structure of the original thesis. I have to admit that I originally entertained the idea of including a number of more theoretical approaches to the material studied in my thesis. I soon realized, however, that such an endeavour would have made an already μέγα βιβλίον resembling a μέγα κακόν even more; accordingly, I had to limit myself to the original scope of the thesis, namely the study of the career of intermediaries and the exploration of their structural role in the relationship between city and king in the Early Hellenistic period. I hope I shall have the opportunity to return to the subject through different approaches in the future. [...]

(from the preface)